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Is left the right way?

Peter Ryan
Feb 8, 2015 8:20PM

Lance Franklin is something of an anomaly as a successful left-footed goalkicker

As long as they can kick well, we're normally quite happy

Geelong recruiting guru Stephen Wells

THERE is no rhyme or reason to it, but left footers dominated major individual awards in 2014.

For the first time ever, the Norm Smith medallist (Luke Hodge), Brownlow medallist (Matt Priddis) and Coleman medallist (Lance Franklin) in one season were all lefties.

And if Brisbane Lions dynamo Lewis Taylor had not pipped Marcus Bontempelli by one vote in the NAB Rising Star award, left footers would have taken over the AFL dais completely.

Seven All Australians and 10 Hawthorn premiership players* (not to mention six Sydney Swans in the Grand Final) were also left footers in 2014.

With Champion Data classifying 144 of the 718 senior listed players as left footers in 2015 (20 percent of the competition), the category is defying probability.

Why?

Are they more efficient kicks, as Champion Data statistics showed a decade ago when former recruiter Chris Pelchen began to take notice.

The man who preached that idea is less certain now, although you get the sense he thinks his fondness for recruiting left footers was overstated when it made news after the Hawks won the 2008 flag.

Pelchen says now that although such information influenced his thinking, the statistical rigour Champion Data applies to measuring kicks now makes it impossible to be definitive about whether left footers are better kicks.

The Cats enter 2015 with just two left footers – Harry Taylor and Jordan Murdoch - on their list (rookie Zac Bates is also a leftie).

"It's just the way it has fallen," Wells told AFL.com.au when asked why so few left footers are on the Cats' list.

Wells seems happy to indulge the question. After all, he's built the list of a team that has missed the top four just once since 2006.

"We place strong emphasis on knowing as much as we can about [recruits] and certainly if they can kick with both feet, or if they are left footers or if they are right footers. It is just part of the information package," Wells said.

"As long as they can kick well, we're normally quite happy."

Champion Data rates Geelong No. 1 in the League for kicking efficiency.

Wells doesn't appear alone among the recruiters. Despite the success of left-footers in 2014, not one of the top 10 draft picks were left footers.

It was, however, the first year not one left-footer had been drafted in the top 10 since 2003 (five of the 2013 top 10 picks were left footers), and you have to go back to 1993 to find the next year without a leftie in the first 10 picks.

However, in 2015, half the clubs have at least nine left footers on their senior list with Hawthorn (the premiers), Collingwood (11th) and St Kilda (the wooden spooners) topping the list of left footers with 12 apiece.

Kicking expert Dr Kevin Ball, who consults to several AFL clubs alongside his academic work at the Institute of Sport, Exercise and Active Living (ISEAL) at Victoria University, told AFL.com.au it is an age-old debate that remains unsolved.

He says it's a reality that left-sided people are over-represented in elite sport, particularly in combat sports and that opponents do tend to instinctively move to block players swinging on their right side, giving left footers an advantage.

Interestingly, in the NFL, left foot punters induce more muffs, or fumbles, from receivers, possibly due to the opposite spin direction they impart on the ball compared to right footers

However there is not enough evidence, either scientific or anecdotal, for Ball to come to any conclusion.

He has worked with great right and left foot kicks, and points out that two of the three most accurate goalkickers in AFL history were right footers: Tony Lockett (70 per cent accuracy) and Peter Hudson (69 per cent).

Matthew Lloyd (69 per cent) is a left footer, however he is an outlier in many respects. Of the top 30 goalkickers in AFL history – those with more than 600 goals – just two, Lloyd and 'Buddy' Franklin, are left footers.

Ball said that coaches are rarely as rigid when teaching left footers in their early years, which might explain their free flowing style.

"A left footer can explore their own kicking a little bit more in their developmental years," Ball said.

Maybe that is why they seem to shine on the big days.

How else do you explain 12 of the 37 Norm Smith medals (32 per cent) awarded since 1979 going to left footers?

When that statistic was put to a senior football official, he laughed.

"Forty-four footballers. Two legs each. Who knows?"

* Champion Data lists Hawthorn's Sam Mitchell as a left footer although conjecture remains as to whether his preferred foot is left or right.